A recipe website built from the recipes my grandmother wrote in a book titled "Recipes for my Grand-daughter" Most of the recipes are traditional Palakkad Iyer dishes, but there’s also a pav bhaji and vada pav hiding somewhere in there. The typeface is inspired by her handwriting, and the entire visual language is built around the warmth and familiarity of her kitchen.
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Stage 1
I began by collating all the recipes into an Excel sheet, identifying the ones I wanted to showcase and grouping them into categories. This helped me understand the scale of the archive and create a system for organising the recipes.
Stage 2
I then illustrated every recipe and its ingredients, building a visual language around the food and the objects used to make it. I also used a Claude-to-CMS integration to import the recipe data, ingredients and process work into the website.
Stage 3
The final stage was bringing everything together. This included building the website, coding the interactive kitchen sound component, creating collages, and carefully spell-checking and voice-checking the recipes, ingredients and personal memories.
Each recipe contains hand-drawn illustrations of the dish and its ingredients, with measurements kept as close as possible to Ammamma's way of writing them, including her very precise “a little if needed.”
The recipes also include detailed instructions, the processes involved, what the dish pairs well with, and other things that can be made using the same ingredients.
There is also a section where you can view her original handwritten recipe directly from the book and read it as she wrote it.
At the end of each recipe is my personal memory of the dish. It captures what I remember, what the food evokes for me, and the little moments that made each dish special.
Making something this personal comes with its own weight. It meant digging through memories, both happy and difficult, and realising how many of mine are tied to food. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the process. Painting the dishes, reading her handwriting and putting everything together made me feel closer to her in a way I hadn't expected.
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